A Kurdish PKK prisoner died on Nov. 1 after what Turkish prison officials claimed was a suicide. Prison officials claimed that the prisoner, Serdar Ari, captured had Antalya in 1998, had set himself on fire. But a delegation of observers… Read moreMysterious death of PKK guerilla in Turkish prison
Organizers of the First International Congress on Islamic Feminism, now underway in Barcelona, are calling for a “gender jihad.” Organizer Abdennur Prado Pavon of the Catalan Islamic board says the struggle for gender equality in Islamic countries involves refuting chauvinist… Read moreIslamic feminists call for “gender jihad”
The Lebanese army has besieged military positions run by the People’s Front for Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), including a network of tunnels dug in the mountains in Sultan Yaqoub (Jacob) area in the eastern Bekaa Valley. Lebanese authorities are… Read moreStand-off in Bekaa Valley
Heavens to Murgatroid! Nuance in the pages of a contemporary left publication! Sasha Abramsky shows in the October issue of The Progressive that it is still, at least, possible. We at WW4 Report do have misgivings about some of what… Read moreThe left’s “al-Qaeda problem”
The Washington Post reports Sept. 29 that a group of Turkish women’s rights activists confronted Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes with harsh criticisms of the US-led invasion of Iraq, turning a session designed to highlight the empowering of women into… Read moreTurkish women blast US envoy
A reference in a recent post on ethnic politics in eastern Anatolia to “the two Kurdish dialects of zaza and kurmanci” prompted the following letter from a reader, which we produce verbatim: Zaza(Sassaniden)’s are not Kurds and not Turks We… Read moreNext: Free Zazaistan?
One man was killed and five officers were injured during clashes between Kurdish protesters and police in southeastern Turkish city of Batman Aug. 29. The violence flared after some 1,000 Kurds marched to demand the release of the bodies of… Read moreKurds clash with Turkish police, one dead
A Reuters report Aug. 18 depicts the situation in the Sinai Peninsula escalating to a small counter-insurgency war between Egyptian security forces and Bedouin Islamic militants. A landmine damaged an Egyptian police vehicle in northern Sinai Aug. 27, injuring a… Read moreEgyptian security forces hunt Bedouin militants in Sinai
The Economist writes in its Aug. 18-25 issue that last week, in a landmark speech in Diyarbakir, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan became the first Turkish leader ever to admit that Turkey had mishandled the Kurdish rebellion in the country’s… Read morePKK ceasefire in Turkey; new attacks in Iran
In a London Times opinion piece Aug. 11, “Muslims unite! A new Reformation will bring your faith into the modern era,” author Salman Rushdie begins by applauding Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, for admitting that… Read moreSalman Rushdie calls for “Islamic Reformation”
Turkey's Kurdish separatist guerillas, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), officially ended a five-year truce in June, and eastern Turkey has since seen a series of bombings and skirmishes. Most recently, five Turkish soldiers died after a bomb blast ripped through… Read moreTurkish intolerance fuels PKK resurgence
Jane Fonda, AKA Hanoi Jane, AKA Beirut Jane is back in the news. She has chosen a rather uncontroversial moment to oppose the Iraq war, doing a bus tour with Iraq veterans’ families. According to the BBC, The star was… Read moreBeirut Jane distorts her history
